Pennsylvania has bigger issues than Pileggi Electoral College plan

Pennsylvania has a lot of problems. Just ask Gov. Tom Corbett. Last week he delivered a budget message that focused on three huge ones that were never seriously addressed by his predecessor, Ed Rendell — a looming pension crisis, our crumbling infrastructure and transportation systems, and an archaic system of state-controlled sales of wine and spirits that’s straight out of the caveman era.

But according to some Republicans, including state Sen. Dominic Pileggi, the Commonwealth faces an even more pressing dilemma. If you think our method of buying alcohol is primitive, it has nothing on our winner-take-all system of awarding Electoral College votes in presidential elections.

Now a cynic would ask: Does this have anything to do with the fact that the state has not backed a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush back in 1988? Or that, despite being firmly in the clutches of the GOP at the local level, Pileggi’s own Delaware County has mimicked the state in going Democratic when it comes to electing a commander-in-chief?

Absolutely not, Pileggi, R-9th of Chester, maintains. The senator believes the winner-take-all format fails to fully represent the voices of the entire state. Especially Republican voices that have been silenced in presidential races dating back to 1988.

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This is not Pileggi’s first trip down this road. The former Chester mayor first suggested changing the electoral system in Pennsylvania before last spring’s primary, shifting to a method that would allot the state’s 20 electoral votes by congressional district. But coming just months before a key presidential election, the plan was widely panned as being blatantly political and Pileggi dropped his crusade.

But he didn’t abandon it. With the Pennsylvania GOP now sporting another loss after President Barack Obama waxed Gov. Mitt Romney in November, Pileggi is back with a new plan. Introducing it just weeks after the presidential vote, the senator believes he is now immune from the criticism that this is a Republican ploy to win elections.

Uh, not exactly.

What Pileggi now envisions is a system that awards two electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in Pennsylvania, and then divvies up the remaining according to the percentage of the vote. Under the plan, Obama would have gotten 12 — not all 20 — of the state’s electoral votes. The other eight would have gone to Romney.

Pileggi insists fairness — not politics — is at the root of his new push, that his plan would better represent the wishes of all the state voters.

Democrats, as you can imagine, don’t see it quite that way. They see something else — an attempt to grab some crucial electoral votes in a state where they have been shut out for the last six presidential elections.

On Friday several state Democrats gathered in Harrisburg to eviscerate Pileggi’s plan.

State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, appealed to Republicans to find their conscience, who are “willing to say, ‘I didn’t get into public service to undermine elections.’”

If the entire nation were shifting to such a popular vote allotment, it might not carry the stench of pure politics. That’s not the case. It’s only being mulled in places like Pennsylvania, which have turned into the hinterlands for Republican presidential standard-bearers.

What is surprising are some of the other voices being raised against these plans. Republican governors in Virginia, Florida and even hard-core Wisconsin and Michigan have rejected such measures as hurtful to the party.

Remember Paul Ryan? The Wisconsin congressman who served as Romney’s vice presidential running mate? You’d think he’d love this kind of plan. If the original idea of allotting electoral votes via congressional district had been in place for the November vote, he might well be vice president today. Yet even he opposes this power grab.

Pileggi should join them and shelve the plan. Again.

The state has plenty of problems. Legislators shouldn’t waste a minute talking about this boondoggle when that ticking time bomb called the state’s two big public employee pensions gets louder every day.